NIU football: Raising the offensive standard with fireworks

CHICAGO – Whether comparing it to fireworks or calling it eye candy, players and coaches on the NIU football team have no shortage of colorful ways of referring to the new-look offense.

“The offense now is just totally different from the offense that we previously had,” wide receiver Spencer Tears said at NIU’s Chicago Media Day on Monday. “I honestly can say you’re going to see a lot of fireworks and a lot of big plays with this new offense that we have.”

[Kaleb Carter]

Coach Thomas Hammock also reiterated what he’s said since the spring about what the new offense will look like.

“It’s going to be different. We’re going to use some different personnel. We’re going to come out of the huddle,” Hammock said. “We’re going to have a lot of ‘eye candy,’ as you call it. We’re going to shift. We’re going to motion and different things. I think that stuff is hard to defend.”

[Kaleb Carter]

The first-year head coach already had called out the receiving group heading out of spring practice as a position group that has to elevate its overall performance, and the returns through the summer, Hammock said, have excited him.

“We think [Tears’] best football is ahead of him,” Hammock said. “We’ve got Dennis Robinson. We’ve got Tyrice Richie. We’ve got some freshmen that we feel can give us a nice group of guys that we can have a rotation to find five or six best guys that we can rely on week to week.”

[Kaleb Carter]

With the quarterback position still up in the air, Hammock referenced each of the three Huskie quarterbacks who took Division I snaps last season.

“We’ve got Marcus Childers, who has won a MAC championship and has game experience. We’ve got Anthony Thompson, who has been in the program. We’ve got Ross Bowers, who came this summer, and we got a couple freshmen who will all be competing.”

[Kaleb Carter]

With fall practice not yet underway, Hammock isn’t interested in giving assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of each quarterback.

“We’ve still got 25 opportunities to go out and practice. I don’t want to give you an assessment partway through; that’s not fair to anybody,” Hammock said. “What I’ve seen is strength in the spring, and some weaknesses maybe have changed based on what they’ve did this summer. I’d say about the week of Aug. 31, I’ll be ready to answer that question.”

[Kaleb Carter]

Hammock expects one quarterback to take the leadership reins, but did cite scenarios in his time at the University of Minnesota (MarQueis Gray) and Baltimore Ravens (Lamar Jackson) where a secondary quarterback’s abilities made it difficult to keep them off the field.

“I think ideally you would like it to be one guy,” he said. “If somebody shows that you can’t keep him off the field, I will never say never, but going into it, we would like one guy to establish himself for the rest of the field to follow.”

[Kaleb Carter]

The pedigree of Hammock’s NFL coaching days have lingered over the team, giving the coach legitimacy as coaches continue to tout the possibilities associated with NIU football.

[Kaleb Carter]

“Since he’s got here, this is probably the hardest I’ve been coached personally,” running back Marcus Jones said. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know for the running back, the standard just grew so much. We’re expecting more. Quite frankly, the offense is going to expect a lot of us. We need to be able to be depended on. That trust factor is going to grow.”